Rising: G-Side

G-Side, the rap duo of YungClova and ST 2 Lettaz, come from Huntsville, Alabama, a mid-sized city that has produced more than its share of great and buzzed-about rappers lately, including Paper Route Gangstaz, Jackie Chain, 6 Tre G, and Kristmas. The Block Beataz production crew has given the city's rap scene its own sound: a woozy, synth-based, bottom-heavy crawl that treats big-room trance the way OutKast and UGK records used to treat 70s soul. G-Side might be the perfect complement to Block Beataz' glimmering funk. Both ST and Clova are warm, conversational rappers who talk about drug-dealing histories and future ambitions with grace and perspective.

Together with Block Beataz, Clove and ST make supremely satisfying album-length statements like the 2008 LP Starshipz & Rocketz and the recent Huntsville International. The latter is more a free internet album album than a mixtape; both members simply call it a "project". It's loosely built around a theme of travel, of the duo's joy in seeing their music make its way around the world. Between songs, various European DJs and bloggers show up to say nice things about the duo. But Clova and ST have never been to Europe; they'll embark on their first European tour this spring. Later this year, they hope to release another album, The One, on the local label Slow MotionSoundz.

Recently, Pitchfork caught up with ST and Clova.

Pitchfork: These days, most rappers are solo artists. Why did you decide to work together instead of alone?

Young Clova: We have been group rappers since '98 or '99. We started rapping together just to be doing something. We have always had the same passion.

ST 2 Lettaz: The streets were telling me that there's this dude David; he started rapping and he going hard. And then people were telling him the same thing, so we just met up.

Pitchfork: Both Huntsville International and Starshipz & Rocketz work cohesively as albums; everything flows into everything else. Do you have a strategy for putting them together like that?

ST: We grew up off real albums. Real albums are like dish dinners to us. We believe in it.

YC: People started to notice, and so we started to notice. Now, it's not so much that we have a formula. It's just that chemistry. It's just that magic that happens when we get in there and work together.

Pitchfork: The last two songs on Huntsville International, "Rising Sun" and "So Wonderful", don't sound like anything you've done before.

YC: We recorded those songs like four days before it came out. [laughs] We knew where we wanted to close, seeing what the project was lacking. We knew we had to finish strong. Those two came out of nowhere.

ST: It always be like that. The last couple songs on Starshipz & Rocketz, we recorded those right before the album dropped because we knew what we had to do closing. CP [of Block Beataz] always goes, "I got one more!", and it always be something we can close on. We know what we want to give him.

YC: Yeah, Master P. He was probably the first dude that made me want to rap. I heard "Ice Cream Man", and I went in and wrote my first verse. And UGK probably has the most influence on our music.

Pitchfork: For a relatively small city, Huntsville seems to be producing a lot of talented rappers lately.

ST: I want to get it across it's not just G-Side making great music out of Huntsville. We got a lot of garbage, too. Like Willie D says, "Some of your artists is garbage." But we got a whole lot of talent in this little piece of the world. And then you go a bit further, and you got Florence, with your G Mane and your Bentleys. Or you go further, to Gadsen, and you got Yelawolf. You go even further, you got Rich Boy and Attitude. Alabama is that spot right now. If we all come together and we do it the way we supposed to do it, it would be no problem to take over. I feel Alabama is making the best music in the world right now.

C: We made a vow: We in this until we die. Blood in, blood out.

Pitchfork: What percentage of your audience has heard your music through the internet versus local word of mouth?

YC: The internet alone keeps it at 95 percent.

ST: I can say this: Huntsville is one of the last markets where you can actually sell CDs. It might not go outside of Huntsville, but you can sell units in Huntsville. We are not unknowns in Huntsville. Our new fanbase is 95 percent internet, though.

Pitchfork: You are coming up in a time when albums generally don't sell. Do you think it's still possible to make a career selling music.

YC: We are against the grain on that. We think we can do it.

ST: We think we can sell records.

YC: We think we can do it, man. Anything is possible. Faith in God. We using the internet a lot, but I think we can do it. We gonna have to get people back to buying good music.

ST: We are going to have to stay independent, more then likely, if we put in the groundwork. It takes years and years and years. We have officially been on Slow Motion Soundz since 2004. Slow Motion Soundz has been around since 1999; it's 10 years old already. It takes time. After three records, me and this fool are going to Europe already. iTunes is a perfect tool for independent artists like us. Say we sell 20,000-- well, that's all ours. That's pretty good money.

Pitchfork: What do you expect to see the first time you go to Europe?

YC: Life. I want to see something totally different. I want to clear my mind, just go over there and do our music, man. They want us to do our music, so that is what we are going to do. ST is probably going to smoke his weed.

ST: [laughs] I wasn't going to say it, but yeah.

YC: I am going to see my females. I am addicted to females.

Pitchfork:Clova, you own a barbershop. Is that what you do for a living?

CY: Yup. W-2, that's it.

Pitchfork: ST, is there something you do something outside of rap?

ST: Yeah, me and my brother run a gas station.

YC: I grind at my barbershop. That's a way to get my CDs out there.

ST: Yeah, them CDs didn't pay for me to go all across the U.S. It was the paycheck. We grind to get it, baby.